Welcome to the PokéCommunity!

Hi there! Thanks for visiting PokéCommunity. We’re a group of Pokémon fans dedicated to providing the best place on the Internet for discussing ideas and sharing fan-made content. Welcome! We’re glad you’re here.

In order to join our community we need you to create an account with us. Doing so will allow you to make posts, submit and view fan art and fan fiction, download fan-made games, and much more. It’s quick and easy; just click here and follow the instructions.

Pokémon Sun and Moon are now available! Read our extensive Sun and Moon review at Daily!

The finale of the fourth annual Favorite Pokémon Tournament is underway in Pokémon General!View the poll and vote for as many Pokémon as you'd like. Voting is only open until the 5th of December though, so don't wait to make your picks!

PokéCommunity Rules

Sections

Forum-wide rules

The community rules are designed to ensure that community members respect the values of other members, and aim to protect members and staff around the community to ensure that it is an enjoyable, safe experience for all its members. These rules are set in conjunction with our terms of service. You may be punished for breaking these rules - please review the “Infractions and bans” section below. The text to the right of each rule indicates the infractions that may be awarded for breaking the rules. While the following rules apply to the community as a whole, some forums within the community may impose extra rules, so please check for rules in such forums before you post. If you have any questions about the following rules, please don't hesitate to contact a higher staff member (that is, a Super Moderator, or any Administrator).

Behavioral Offenses(Behavioral offenses are worth four points and expire in six months)

Trolling - Inflammatory or irrelevant messages with the sole intent of provoking other users or inciting controversy.Harassment/Personal Attacks - Insulting, harassing, or threatening your fellow members. Respect everyone on the forum regardless of their views or opinions.Distribution of illegal content - Unauthorized distribution of TV shows, movies, video games (including video game disc or ROM images), music, or software. You may not discuss how to obtain these materials, upload them to the PokéCommunity, or link to other web sites containing these materials.Plagiarism - Do not claim the work of anyone else as your own. Always remember to credit others for their creations or works.Offering paid goods/services - You may not use the PokéCommunity to sell goods or offer paid services. Monetary transactions of any kind (such as trading cards, digital content, other goods, or even links to sites like eBay) are not allowed on the forums — we provide no protection for transactions made on the community and ban them to protect the interest of all parties.

Posting Offenses(Posting offenses are worth three points and expire in six months)

Off-topic/SPAM - Meaningless posts, or posts with no relevance to the thread. Such posts often do not add anything to a thread and hence may be removed.
Double posting - Avoid making more than one post in a row. Edit posts if you need to add more content to them. See specific sectional rules for where this may not apply.Censor bypass/excessive swearing - Purposefully bypassing the censor through coding or alt code text. There is a filter enabled for most common swear words and it will censor these words automatically - you may choose to disable the censor if you want to. Do not swear excessively.Thread revival - Most threads are considered "old" or "dead" after one month (30 days). Please do not revive old threads like this. Create a new topic if you discover this is the case. See specific sectional rules for where this may not apply.

Minor Offenses(Posting offenses are worth one point and expire in one month)

Signatures - If your signature is disabled three times by a member of staff, you will be given an infraction.

Bannable Offenses(These offenses will result in a permanent ban, unless otherwise noted)

Unsolicited advertising - Advertising websites or forums is not permitted. If you'd like to link to a website or forum post, it must be relevant. You may, however, advertise in your signature. Any other advertising deemed irrelevant may be edited out of posts without question. Joining to advertise a website or service will result in a permanent ban.Explicit content - In no section of the community can an image or link to a pornography site be submitted. Deliberately posting explicit content will lead to an immediate, permanent ban, regardless of a member's status or position.

Infractions and bans

The PokéCommunity has an Infractions system for dealing with members who constantly break rules. The infractions system runs on a system of points, so if you break a rule, you will be given infraction points as a result. The points you may receive will vary depending on the severity of the offense. If you accumulate enough infraction points, your account will be suspended and you will be unable to access the forums. Listed to the right of each rule above are possible infraction points for breaking that particular rule as well as the time the infraction will last for. Some forums may also impose additional infractions, so please read the rules for those forums for any infractions that may apply.

Generally when you break a rule for the first time, you may be warned, indicated by a yellow card, often refered to as a "warning".This is more of a cautionary message and does not award you any infraction points. It is usually given before a Red Card.

For more severe offenses, or for if you continue to break rules, you will be awarded a red card, commonly refered to as an "infraction".Each red card has infraction points associated with them. Most red cards will expire after a given amount of time and will have no value. Red cards can also "stack" - if you continue to break a specific rule, the time for a related infraction to that rule may increase as a result.

Whenever you've received an infraction, you'll receive a private message listing the infraction, the reason you were infracted, and the offending post (if applicable). You can check your infractions or warnings under the Infractions tab in your profile.

Infractions do have bearing, as they lead to bans. Your account will be suspended if you accumulate the following number of cards or points, whichever comes first:

Bans based on number of infraction points

If the total number of active (non-expired) infractions exceed the following numbers, your account will be suspended for the times shown below:

If you earn up to or have exceeded 9 infraction points, your account will be suspended for two weeks.

Earning 12 points or more will result in your account being suspended for a further three weeks.

Earning 15 points or more will result in your account being suspended for one month.

You will be banned from the forums permanently if you accumulate 18 points or more.

Bans based on accumulating infractions

While red cards lose their point value, the number of infractions you earn will still count towards a suspension. If you earn the following number of red card infractions and these infractions have not been reversed, you will be banned for the specified times:

If you have received 5 infractions or more, regardless of expiry, your account will be suspended for two weeks.

If you receive at least 9 infractions, your account will be suspended for one month.

Receiving 13 red cards or more, whether expired or not, will result in your account being banned permanently.

Note: Bans do not duplicate. For example, if you receive 12 infraction points at the same time you receive 5 cards, you will still only be banned for two weeks.

If you disagree with an infraction or ban you've received, you must bring it up with either the moderator that awarded the infraction, or a higher staff member. This is to be done via private messaging with those parties—threads or posts discussing infractions or bans will be removed.

Furthermore, if you are banned, you have the recourse of submitting a ban appeal via the Ban Appeals forum, which will only appear while you are banned. This allows you to communicate with and discuss your infractions and resultant ban with the PokéCommunity staff.

Registration and accounts

Your username can now be changed after registration.
Currently, username changes are possible. Check the username change threads that will appear in January, May and September. Please do not message the admins directly asking for a name change.

User names should be appropriate and cannot contain hidden characters.
All user names must conform to the community standards and be appropriate for a general family friendly audience. Hidden characters and UTF-8 characters designed to hide, glitch, or be unseen are not allowed in your username.

You are not allowed to use multiple accounts to create an illusion of more than one person.You may not create an alternate account simply to vote on a poll or back up an argument, mislead other members, or evade a ban. If you create a new account, you must not pretend to be a new member; this is called sock-puppeting. Note that this does not prohibit having multiple accounts (for yourself or individuals in your family) in general. Accounts used to sidestep bans will be suspended without question.

Do not ask about a member's ban.The details of a ban are kept between the banned member and the staff team. The staff have no obligation to answer questions to a third party. Requests for such information will not be answered.

User Profiles

User profiles are a way for you to show off your identity on PC. You can post and receive public messages on other profiles and display your friends and photos. You can also customize the colours (and background images if you're a supporter).

No inappropriate images.
You are allowed to upload images to your personal album, but make sure they comply with the PokéCommunity rules. This means nothing inappropriate, whether in a private or public album.

The 25-character and 4-word rule does not apply.
Yes, this means you can bypass the limit as much as you want in the visitor messages.

Do not give out any personal information.
Giving out information such as your full name, your address or telephone number can be very dangerous online. Be cautious when sharing information.

A YouTube video or sound file may not be set to auto-play.
There are still a lot of people on PC who use dial-up or have a bandwidth cap. To have a hefty video file (especially in HD!) load automatically each time they visit your profile can really hinder their browsing experience. Thus, anyone who sets their video to auto-play may have it removed by the administrators.

Blogs

Your blog is like your online diary, for all members to see (you're free to fine-tune your privacy options, however). You're allowed to blog about anything, whether it's about the new Pokémon game you've just bought, commentary on something that's happened in the news, your PokéCommunity life, or anything else. Blogs are available to Tier 2 Community Supporters and staff members, as well as members who have accumulated 2000 posts or more. The PokéCommunity forum-wide rules apply to both blog entries and comments.

Try to keep your comments positive.
Please keep unnecessarily negative, rude, or meaningless comments to yourself and off the blogs.

Word and character limits don't apply.
You should try and ensure that you have meaningful blog posts or comments, but note that we won't be enforcing the four word rule or 25-character limits in blogs.

Do not give out any personal information.
Giving out information such as your full name, your address or telephone number can be very dangerous online. Be cautious when sharing information.

Clubs

Want to band with members who are big fans of something? Look for or make a club — these are available in selected areas! Clubs are prefixed with a Club thread category.

Follow the rules set by each club.A club may set its own sets of rules in conjunction with the PokéCommunity rules and the rules of its parent section. Be sure to follow these rules — you may otherwise be removed from the club or group. Note that only PokéCommunity and section rules are actively enforced by the moderators — so we won't issue infractions based on your own club's rules.

Before making a club, check if a club already exists.Search the forums (search the categories for [Club]) to see if a club already exists. If a club already exists and has been active, then any duplicate clubs will be closed.

All clubs should need to make it clear how to sign up and should maintain a list of current members.For users to join your club, you'll need to list a method of signing up (for instance, a form). The difference between a normal thread and a club thread is that a clubs are restricted to members who are willing to join and talk about the club's topic of the day at hand, so make it easy to sign up. It should at least provide a name form, and could ask a question or other additional information (as relevant to your club). A sign-up form for a character club, for example, looks like this:

Club ownership may be transferred by the owner (or by request if the owner is inactive).If you need to have a club transferred, send a message to the moderator of the forum where the club is contained. Be sure to tell the moderator who to transfer ownership to. Also note that for clubs where the owner is inactive for at least 30 days, we may opt to transfer ownership to another member — generally any existing co-owners or members in the club. If a club is inactive and you'd like to take ownership, message a moderator.

Signatures

If your signature breaches any of the following rules, it will be disabled and a notice will be appended in your signature space. After your signature has been disabled three times, you will receive a 1 point infraction with a 1 month expiry (a "minor offense" infraction) and a consecutive infraction for each breach afterwards. Excessive violation of the rules may result in the revocation of your signature privileges.

Signatures cannot exceed 350 pixels in height total.
Signatures are exactly that: signatures. They're simply used for better identification of the poster and a form of expression on a forum. They do not need to take up anymore space than the content of your post. Signatures larger than 350 pixels in height are larger than they need to be. This includes blank space, text, images, and CSS.

Signatures cannot exceed 600 pixels in width.The total width of a signature cannot exceed 600 pixels in width. Images stretch the forum for smaller styles, and 600 pixels is the point where some of our smaller width styles and smaller screen resolutions start to break the HTML tables if something is too large in the post content. Text is permitted to exceed the 600px width limit.

CSS can not exceed 600 pixels in width.
We need to clarify that while CSS can be fluid, a signature doesn't need to take up that much space and doesn't need to be that wide. While it may not hold the risk of stretching the forum, it defeats much of the purpose of a signature to have it larger than the width of signatures. In saying that, CSS is included in the 600px width limit.

Variable widths in CSS are not allowed.
In addition to the above, and to simplify CSS for everyone -- sorry CSS-wizzes -- CSS width in percentages is not permitted. It should be noted that all staff members have the ability to view the code in your signature, and if it's found to have a width% value, it will be disabled.

The combined size of any content in your signature may not exceed 2 megabytes.
Some of the users browsing the forum have slower internet speeds, so it takes longer for them to load pages than those who have faster connections. One of the many contributing aspects of loading a web page is loading images, and large file sizes heavily impact the load time of a webpage. Large file sizes for images are most commonly seen in large, animated .gif images. Your signature content may not exceed 2 megabytes in file size.

Spoiler tags are not permitted in signatures.
There isn't much of a need for them and they only take up even more space due to padding and extra blank space.

Avoid rapidly changing images with high contrast.
Consider the affect your images will have on a member with sensitive eyes, or with photosensitive epilepsy.

Do not abuse the CSS tags.Please do not use CSS in malicious or intrusive ways. This will be handled on a case-by-case basis by the staff, depending on severity of the offence.

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